He went down in a tangle of bodies, right through the gate and fence, splintering both. Stiles landed with two on top of him, but he quickly bridged and threw them over his head before their momentum was spent. He rolled with them and came up on top, clutching one of the jagged fence slats he’d landed on, and driving it through the top vampire with such force that it transfixed the one beneath him as well. Then two or more caught the soldier from behind and slammed him into the side door of the van with a jarring force that made his vision swim. Strong hands latched onto his throat and began to choke the fight from him even as others piled on top, man, woman, and child, all tugging and grabbing at him. One woman crawled over the rest and bit at his throat but her teeth found only the cold hands that held him.

Stiles reached, strained for the door latch.

The hands left his throat, and two mouths took their place.

He caught hold of the pull handle.

I hope you didn’t lock it, Charlie. . . .

The sliding mechanism activated and the door panel moved beneath their weight, throwing the lot of them off balance and spilling Stiles and his immediate captors into the carpeted interior of the van. He twisted away from them for just an instant, and his hands found the spare Remington between the front seats, right where he’d left it. He drove the sawed-off handle into the nearest face he could find, then brought it across the jaw of the other female that had tumbled in with him. He shoved them back toward the door; then turned the yawning bore of the 12-gauge on them and blew them back onto the gravel and kept firing on the whole group. The vampires fell over one another trying to get away, and the shoulder of the road was littered with bodies by the time he hit an empty chamber. He jumped to the door and kicked a corpse aside so he could get it shut, then locked it and all the others too.

But the vampires were persistent. They were already pounding on the sides of the van.

He took the time right then to reload the shotgun, then drooped the extra bandoliers over his shoulders and, as an afterthought, picked up the Uzi from the counter and the H & K carbine from the bunk compartment. They didn’t shoot silver, but they could still do their share of damage. He could never be overarmed.